---
display_title: "Docs Edition: What to Use for Developer Documentation"
meta_title: "Developer Documentation Tools: What to Use in 2025"
meta_description: "A practical guide to choosing the right developer documentation stack in 2025. Compare file-based docs, Git-based CMS, headless CMS, hosted docs platforms, and fully custom documentation systems."
author: "John Jeong"
created: "2025-12-02"
published: true
---

Documentation is not the same thing as blogging.

Docs are a product.

People rely on them to unblock themselves, integrate with you, debug issues, and understand how your system actually works.

So the tools you'd use for blog posts don't always work for docs.

Docs need structure.

Docs need navigation.

Docs need versioning, API examples, sidebars, and searchable knowledge.

But they also need to be maintainable by a real team — engineers, PMs, support, devrel — not just whoever has access to the CMS.

This post is my honest breakdown of what tools you should consider in 2025 if you're building developer documentation from scratch.

## There Are Really Only Five Kinds of Docs Systems

No matter what marketing pages say, every modern docs system falls into one of these:

1. **Pure File-Based (MD/MDX)**  
			→ Docusaurus, Nextra, Mintlify Open Source, MkDocs, Astro + MDX

2. **Git-Based CMS Layer on Top**  
			→ Keystatic, TinaCMS, Decap

3. **Headless CMS with Docs Frontend**  
			→ Sanity, Payload, Contentful powering a docs UI

4. **Hosted Docs Platforms**  
			→ GitBook, Readme.com, Mintlify Cloud, Archbee, Notion (light docs)

5. **Custom, In-Product Documentation**  
			→ Your own framework + components (what many top devtools do)

Each has a different cost model, maintenance profile, and failure mode.

Let's break them down.

## 1. Pure File-Based Docs (MDX) — The Default for Technical Teams

This includes:

- Docusaurus
- Nextra
- MkDocs / Material for MkDocs
- Astro + MDX
- TanStack Start + MDX

This is the modern "docs-as-code" standard.

### Pros

- Lives in Git → versioned, diffable, PR-reviewable
- MD/MDX gives you unlimited flexibility
- Easy to automate (scripts, linting, link checking, TOC generation)
- Works perfectly with CI + preview deployments
- No vendor lock-in
- Very low maintenance overhead
- Free

### Cons

- Requires engineers to maintain structure
- Non-technical contributors may need training
- No built-in search unless you configure it
- No built-in analytics, roles, review workflows

### When to Use It

You're a technical team.

You want control.

You don't want to introduce complexity prematurely.

You don't have 15 PMs writing docs every day.

For 80% of startups, file-based MDX docs will be the right answer.

This is what Vercel, Supabase, Clerk, Planetscale, PostHog, and most modern OSS projects use.

## 2. Git-Based CMS Layer — Best Middle Ground

Tools like:

- Keystatic
- TinaCMS
- Decap CMS

These tools give you a visual UI for editing docs while still using Markdown/MDX in Git.

### Pros

- Non-engineers can safely edit docs
- Still uses your repo as the source of truth
- No database migrations or content lakes
- Easy to adopt later (minimal migration)

### Cons

- Another admin app to host and maintain
- UI may not support advanced MDX patterns
- Contributors still need to understand the repo structure
- Slight complexity overhead

### When to Use It

Your PMs, DevRel, Support, or Marketing team needs to contribute regularly.

But you want to maintain the "content lives in Git" principle.

This is the "best of both worlds" middle layer.

## 3. Headless CMS for Docs — Powerful but Often Overkill

Using Sanity, Payload, or Contentful to power docs.

### Pros

- Strong content modeling
- Great for enterprises with localization, versioning, workflows
- Good structured content for advanced API docs
- Great for multi-surface (web, app, internal tools)

### Cons

- Massive configuration overhead
- Schema migrations become a real job
- Docs UI is never as natural as MDX
- Lock-in increases each quarter
- You are now maintaining a CMS backend forever

### When to Use It

You're big.

You have multiple products, multiple locales, and multiple teams updating docs.

Think Stripe-level documentation needs.

If you're under 100 employees, this is almost always unnecessary.

## 4. Hosted Docs Platforms — Fastest to Deploy, Most Lock-In

Examples:

- GitBook
- Mintlify Cloud
- Readme.com
- Archbee
- Notion (light docs)

### Pros

- Beautiful out of the box
- Built-in search, analytics, versioning
- Great WYSIWYG editors
- Good for non-technical writers
- Fastest path to "we have docs"

### Cons

- Hard to integrate tightly with your product or marketing site
- Proprietary content format (exports are messy)
- Limited MDX component support
- Outgrows you once you want custom layouts
- You become dependent on their roadmap

### When to Use It

You need docs fast, your team is mixed-technical, and you don't mind platform reliance.

This works well for teams in a hurry or companies that don't have deep frontend capabilities.

## 5. Custom In-Product Docs — The Future for Some Teams

Many modern companies (Linear, Raycast, Warp, Replit) are increasingly embedding docs directly into their product or creating heavily customized documentation systems:

- React/MDX component libraries
- Interactive playgrounds
- Copyable codeblocks
- Live components
- Search that ties into product data
- Custom navigation patterns
- AI-assisted docs generation / contextual help

### Pros

- Total control
- Can be integrated tightly with your app
- Interactive demos, live sandboxes, code runners
- Enables future AI-native experiences
- Perfect branding

### Cons

- Highest build & maintenance cost
- Requires strong frontend & infra engineering
- Docs become a product, not just content

### When to Use It

You're building a developer platform and your docs are part of your differentiation.

This is the final evolution stage.

## So… Which Should You Use in 2025? (Decision Guide)

Here's the simplest way to not overthink it:

**If your writers are engineers** → use file-based MDX docs.

You'll ship faster than with any CMS.

**If non-engineers need to edit** → add Keystatic/Tina.

Do not jump to a headless CMS.

**If you're large with multiple products + locales** → consider Sanity/Payload.

But only when structure becomes real pain.

**If you need something live tomorrow** → GitBook/Mintlify Cloud.

Accept the lock-in for speed.

**If your docs are part of your product** → build custom.

This is where world-class developer tooling systems end up.

## Things Most Teams Don't Realize About Docs

### 1. Docs age faster than blogs

They need pruning, refactoring, and maintenance.

MDX makes this infinitely easier than any CMS.

### 2. Versioning is non-negotiable

If your API or SDK evolves, you need doc versioning.

The simplest version?

A folder per version in Git.

A CMS makes this a nightmare.

### 3. Search matters more than design

Your docs UI can be plain — but your search must be excellent.

Algolia DocSearch, Pagefind, or a custom hybrid works well.

### 4. Docs need to survive your future rewrites

Your framework will change.

Your content shouldn't break with it.

This is why MDX in Git is the gold standard.

## What We're Betting On at Hyprnote

We're building our docs on:

- TanStack Start + MDX
- GitHub PR workflow
- Custom MDX components (callouts, tabs, code demos)
- Automatic TOC + search
- Keystatic layer as our team grows
- Future: interactive "live notebooks" tied to Hyprnote

The principle is simple:

**Docs are code.**

And the best way to maintain code is with tools you already love.

---

This is Part 5 of our publishing series.

1. [Why We Write Our Blog in an IDE](/blog/using-ide-for-writing)
2. [Why Our CMS Is GitHub](/blog/why-our-cms-is-github)
3. [Choosing a CMS in 2025](/blog/choosing-a-cms)
4. [Don't Use a CMS Until You Absolutely Need One](/blog/dont-use-a-cms)
5. [Docs Edition: What to Use for Developer Documentation](/blog/developer-documentation-tools) (You are here)
6. [How We Built Hyprnote's Publishing Stack](/blog/hyprnote-publishing-stack)
